Friends and family of victims outside the bail hearing for convicted sex offender Martin Tremblay at B.C. Provincial Court in Vancouver, B.C., January 28, 2011.Photo by
Nick Procaylo

This article originally appeared in The Province on Jan. 29, 2011

Tears run down the 17-year-old girl’s face as she recounts in a whisper the drunken night two years ago she spent with a sex offender previously convicted of sexually assaulting five teenage girls.

Standing outside Vancouver Provincial Court, the girl agreed to talk through her fear and embarrassment because she wants to make sure Martin Tremblay, 45, stays behind bars.

Tremblay, convicted in December 2003 of sexually assaulting the five girls between the ages of 13 and 15, all First Nations, was scheduled for a bail hearing Friday on a string of drug charges relating to offences in Vancouver this year.

Last year, Tremblay was linked to two teenage girls who died within hours of each other, but was never charged.

The Province has learned that Tremblay’s arrest this month is related to Project Rescue, one of two major Vancouver police investigations unveiled last week targeting the city’s most violent and predatory drug dealers.

Vancouver police announced Thursday that they’d made eight arrests connected to projects Tyrant and Rescue and promised more would follow. Tremblay was not mentioned, but Const. Lindsey Houghton said details of his arrest on drug charges will be forthcoming.

Families of Tremblay’s alleged victims and women’s groups from the Downtown Eastside, meantime, staged an emotional protest Friday outside the courthouse, concerned that Tremblay could get bail.

“It scares me,” the girl said when asked about the possibility of Tremblay getting out. “[I want the courts] to keep him in jail and keep him away.”

It was two years ago, she says, that Martin Tremblay walked into her life, a man described as a charmer who liked to flash his cash and who the other girls referred to as their street dad.

It’s the term her close friend, Kayla Lalonde, used when introducing her to Tremblay that first night the three of them shared sips from a bottle of hard liquor. Tremblay kept the bottles coming and soon they went to another house, where she blacked out.

She says she woke up the next morning in a car park, half-dressed with no shoes on, but has never reported the incident to police. Lalonde, she says, woke up at a downtown bus stop with no clothes on.

A year later, on March 2, 2010, Lalonde was dead, her body dumped on the side of the road in the 400-block of Rumble Street in Burnaby. She was 16.

Later that same morning, her friend, 17-year-old Martha Jackson Hernandez, died in hospital after being rushed by ambulance from a home in the 4200-block of Smith Crescent in Richmond that was being rented to a Martin Trembley.

Toxicology reports indicate the girls died from a lethal mix of alcohol and drugs and police believe their deaths are linked. At the time, friends of the two teens told The Province the girls had been hanging out with a man they called Martin.

During his B.C. Supreme Court trial in 2003, Tremblay admitted to court that he lured the teens to his home with promises of drugs and alcohol. When they passed out, he videotaped himself assaulting them.

He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison and 18 months’ probation.

Outside Vancouver court, Mona Woodward, Women’s Memorial March organizer and Sister Watch representative, said she wonders whether Tremblay may have more victims who are too afraid to come forward.

Selena Chavez, 13, who also attended court Friday, says she knows a few teenagers who have had bad experiences.

“I just want him to stay in jail and for people to not have to worry about being sexually abused or drugged by this man,” she said. “I don’t think we should have to worry about this kind of stuff.”

Tremblay’s bail hearing was postponed to Feb. 3 and he remains in custody.

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